infocmp

Curses Command

infocmp can be used to compare a binary terminfo entry
with other terminfo entries, rewrite a terminfo description to take advantage
of the use= terminfo field, or print out a terminfo description
from the binary file (term) in a variety of formats.
In all cases, the boolean fields will be printed first, followed by the numeric
fields, followed by the string fields.

infocmp compares the terminfo description of the first
terminal termname with each of the descriptions given by the
entries for the other terminal's termnames. If a capability is
defined for only one of the terminals, the value returned will depend on the
type of the capability: F for boolean variables, -1
for integer variables, and NULL for string variables.

The -d option produces a list of each capability that is
different between two entries. This option is useful to show the difference
between two entries, created by different people, for the same or similar
terminals.

The -c option produces a list of each capability that is
common between two entries. Capabilities that are not set
are ignored. This option can be used as a quick check to
see if the -u option is worth using.

The -n option produces a list of each capability that is
in neither entry. If no termnames are given, the environment
variable TERM will be used for both of the
termnames.
This can be used as a quick check to see if anything was
left out of a description.

The -I, -L, -C,
-r options
will produce a source listing for each terminal named.

-Iuse the terminfo names-Luse the long C variable name listed in <term.h>-Cuse the termcap names-rwhen using -C, put out all capabilitiesin termcap form

If no termname are given, the environment variable
TERM will be used for the terminal name.

The source produced by the -C option may be used directly
as a termcap entry, but not all parameterized strings can
be changed to the termcap format. infocmp will attempt to
convert most of the parameterized information, and anything
not converted will be plainly marked in the output
and commented out. These should be edited by hand.

All padding information for strings will be collected
together and placed at the beginning of the string where
termcap expects it. Mandatory padding (padding information with a trailing '/') will become optional.

All termcap variables no longer supported by terminfo, but
which are derivable from other terminfo variables, will be
output. Not all terminfo capabilities will be translated;
only those variables which were part of termcap will normally
be output. Specifying the -r option will take off
this restriction, allowing all capabilities to be output
in termcap form.

Note that because padding is collected to the beginning of
the capability, not all capabilities are output. Mandatory
padding is not supported. Because termcap strings
are not as flexible, it is not always possible to convert
a terminfo string capability into an equivalent termcap
format. A subsequent conversion of the termcap file back
into terminfo format will not necessarily reproduce the
original terminfo source.

Some common terminfo parameter sequences, their termcap
equivalents, and some terminal types which commonly have
such sequences, are:

The -u option produces a terminfo source description of
the first terminal termname which is relative to the sum
of the descriptions given by the entries for the other
terminals termnames. It does this by analyzing the
differences between the first termname and the other
termnames and producing a description with use=
fields for the other terminals. In this manner, it is possible to
retrofit generic terminfo entries into a terminal's
description. Or, if two similar terminals exist, but were
coded at different times or by different people so that
each description is a full description, using infocmp will
show what can be done to change one description to be relative to the other.

A capability will get printed with an at-sign (@) if it no
longer exists in the first termname, but one of the other
termname entries contains a value for it. A capability's
value gets printed if the value in the first termname is
not found in any of the other termname entries, or if the
first of the other termname entries that has this capability
gives a different value for the capability than that
in the first termname.

The order of the other termname entries is significant.
Since the terminfo compiler tic does a left-to-right scan
of the capabilities, specifying two use= entries that contain
differing entries for the same capabilities will produce different
results depending on the order that the
entries are given in. infocmp will flag any such
inconsistencies between the other termname entries as they are
found.

Alternatively, specifying a capability after a
use= entry that contains that capability will cause the
second specification to be ignored.
Using infocmp to recreate a description can be a useful
check to make sure that everything was specified correctly in the original
source description.

Another error that does not cause incorrect compiled
files, but will slow down the compilation time, is specifying
extra use= fields that are superfluous. infocmp
will flag any other termnameuse= fields that
were not needed.

d leave fields in the order that they are stored in the terminfo database.
i sort by terminfo name.
l sort by the long C variable name.
c sort by the termcap name.

If the -s option is not given, the fields printed out
will be sorted alphabetically by the terminfo name
within each type, except in the case of the -C or the
-L options, which cause the sorting to be done by the
termcap name or the long C variable name, respectively.

-F

compares terminfo files. This assumes that two following arguments are
filenames. The files are searched for pairwise matches between entries,
with two entries considered to match if any of their names
do. The report printed to standard output lists
entries with no matches in the other file, and
entries with more than one match. For entries with
exactly one match it includes a difference report.

-p

ignores padding specifications when comparing strings.

-vn

prints out tracing information on standard error as
the program runs. Higher values of n induce greater verbosity.

-V

prints out the version of the program in use on standard error and exits.

-1

causes the fields to be printed out one to a line.
Otherwise, the fields will be printed several to a
line to a maximum width of 60 characters.

-T

eliminates size-restrictions on the generated text.
This is mainly useful for testing and analysis, since
the compiled descriptions are limited (for example, 1023 for
termcap, 4096 for terminfo).

-wwidth

changes the output to width characters.

-Rsubset

restricts output to a given subset. This option is
for use with archaic versions of terminfo like those
on SVr1, Ultrix, or HP/UX that don't support the full
set of SVR4/XSI Curses terminfo; and outright broken
ports like AIX that have their own extensions incompatible
with SVr4/XSI. Available terminfo subsets
are "SVr1", "Ultrix",
"HP", and "AIX";
see terminfo for details.
You can also choose the subset "BSD"
which selects only capabilities with
termcap equivalents recognized by 4.4BSD.

-e

dumps the capabilities of the given terminal as a C
initializer for a TERMTYPE structure (the terminal
capability structure in the <term.h>). This option
is useful for preparing versions of the curses
library hardwired for a given terminal type.

The location of the compiled terminfo database is taken
from the environment variable TERMINFO . If the variable
is not defined, or the terminal is not found in that location,
the system terminfo database, in
$ROOTDIR/usr/lib/terminfo, will be used. The options
-A and -B may be used to override this
location. The -A
option will set TERMINFO for the first
termname and the -B
option will set TERMINFO for the other
termnames. With
this, it is possible to compare descriptions for a terminal
with the same name located in two different databases.
This is useful for comparing descriptions for the same
terminal created by different people.

-i

analyzes the initialization (is1, is2,
is3), and reset
(rs1, rs2, rs3), strings in the entry.
For each
string, the code tries to analyze it into actions in
terms of the other capabilities in the entry, certain
X3.64/ISO 6429/ECMA-48 capabilities, and certain DEC
VT-series private modes (the set of recognized special
sequences has been selected for completeness
over the existing terminfo database). Each report
line consists of the capability name, followed by a
colon and space, followed by a printable expansion of
the capability string with sections matching recognized
actions translated into {}-bracketed descriptions.
Here is a list of the DEC/ANSI special sequences recognized:

It also recognizes a SGR action corresponding to
ANSI/ISO 6429/ECMA Set Graphics Rendition, with the
values NORMAL, BOLD, UNDERLINE, BLINK, and REVERSE.
All but NORMAL may be prefixed with `+' (turn on) or
`-' (turn off). An SGR0 designates an empty highlight
sequence (equivalent to {SGR:NORMAL}).

The -F option is not supported in SVr4 curses. (It is
primarily intended to help infocmp's author, while wearing
his terminfo/termcap maintainer hat, merge
termcap/terminfo files from various sources into the master.)

The -R, -p, -e,
-T and -i options are not supported in
SVr4 curses.

The -r option's notion of `termcap' capabilities is System
V Release 4's. Actual BSD curses versions will have a
more restricted set. To see only the 4.4BSD set, use -r-RBSD.